n Markheim,
Unalaska? I cook, his house, long time. No spend money. Bime-by,
plenty. Pretty good, I think, go down and see White Man's Land. Very
fine, White Man's Land, very fine," she added. Her English puzzled him,
for Sandy and he had sought, constantly, to better her speech, and she
had proved an apt pupil. Now it seemed that she had sunk back into her
race. Her face was guileless, stolidly guileless, giving no cue. Kitty's
untroubled brow likewise baffled him. What had happened? How much had
been said? and how much guessed?

While he wrestled with these questions and while Jees Uck wrestled with
her problem--never had he looked so wonderful and great--a silence fell.

"To think that you knew my husband in Alaska!" Kitty said softly.

Knew him! Jees Uck could not forbear a glance at the boy she had borne
him, and his eyes followed hers mechanically to the window where played
the two children. An iron hand seemed to tighten across his forehead.
His knees went weak and his heart leaped up and pounded like a fist
against his breast. His boy! He had never dreamed it!

Little Kitty Bonner, fairylike in gauzy lawn, with pinkest of cheeks and
bluest of dancing eyes, arms outstretched and lips puckered in
invitation, was striving to kiss the boy. And the boy, lean and lithe,
sunbeaten and browned, skin-clad and in hair-fringed and hair-tufted
_muclucs_ that showed the wear of the sea and rough work, coolly
withstood her advances, his body straight and stiff with the peculiar
erectness common to children of savage people. A stranger in a strange
land, unabashed and unafraid, he appeared more like an untamed animal,
silent and watchful, his black eyes flashing from face to face, quiet so
long as quiet endured, but prepared to spring and fight and tear and
scratch for life, at the first sign of danger.

The contrast between boy and girl was striking, but not pitiful. There
was too much strength in the boy for that, waif that he was of the
generations of Shpack, Spike O'Brien, and Bonner. In his features, clean
cut as a cameo and almost classic in their severity, there were the power
and achievement of his father, and his grandfather, and the one known as
the Big Fat, who was captured by the Sea people and escaped to Kamchatka.

Neil Bonner fought his emotion down, swallowed it down, and choked over
it, though his face smiled with good-humour and the joy with which one
meets a friend.

"Your boy, eh,